The Station Agent

A meticulous and generous movie about friendship and companionship that includes deformity only to get beyond it. Midget Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) inherits rural land in New Jersey that includes an faded train depot. The quiet Finbar, who loves trains, sets up shop in the depot and gradually befriends a Cuban hot-dog vendor Joe Oramas (Bobby Cannavale), who tends to his ailing father. He also grows close to divorced artist Olivia Harris (Patricia Clarkson) who can think of nothing but her dead son Sam. Finbar, Joe, and Olivia form the rarest of oddball screen companions, fully-formed characters who care about one another tangibly and communicate it vulnerably.

Writer-director Thomas McCarthy has a basic sense not only of loneliness but of the complications of being social. Dinklage, Cannavale, and Clarkson are both radiant and sad. A gem.